Lessons

Lessons provide the content for the Epicodus curriculum and are designated with a book icon and day of the week for review. Lessons include text to be read and a cheat sheet that summarizes terminology, code and tips from the text.

Some lessons include videos and others do not. Where videos are included on a lesson, some students prefer to watch the video, others prefer to read the text. Often video content is also available from external resources (Treehouse, Railscasts, etc). These resources are integrated into Epicodus content to offer a variety of sources for learning and finding solutions. As Epicodus coursework gets more advanced, students are encouraged to be more independent in using external resources to find solutions for the coding they are undertaking.

In the first weeks of the Intro to Programming course, lesson content will be explored as part of daily work in class (although you are always welcome to review at home as well). By the final weeks of the Intro course and all level 2 and 3 courses, lessons will be assigned as homework so that class time consists entirely of coding practice.

Exercises

Exercises provide coding activities for students to practice the tools and concepts learned in the lessons. Exercises are designated with a pencil icon. Pre-work exercises are completed at home and weekly exercises are completed in class. In-class exercises are composed of several sections:

Goals

At the top of each exercise the goals for completing the exercise are outlined. This includes what skills and concepts the specific exercise is focused around, and what we hope you'll gain from completing it.

Warm Up

The warm up section contains discussion questions to go over with your partner. (Or, when included in the pre-work, to ask yourself before moving on). These ensure you both have a basic understanding of the concepts the exercise will explore before you begin coding, and provide you an opportunity to review as necessary before jumping into the code. Sometimes warm ups will contain brief reading material to go over with your partner, or short exercises, too.

Code

This is the outline of the project or activity you'll be coding. This section generally includes the requirements of the project, and any relevant instructions, tips, tricks, or ideas.

Further Exploration

Contains ideas to take your projects one step further if you and your partner happen to finish the basic requirements with time to spare. This usually includes adding additional features, exploring bonus concepts, or other fun challenges.

Feedback

Every lesson and exercise has a black Feedback tab on the middle right of the page. At Epicodus, we want to hear from you. If there is a lesson that really helped grow your understanding or if there is a suggestion you may have for improvement, we value your insight and hope that you will share it with us.

Your submitted feedback goes immediately to the curriculum development team and is reviewed daily. When leaving feedback, we encourage you to provide your email (not required!) so that we can connect with you for clarification and updates AND most importantly, to thank you for your time.